A Flash of Green Light
by Quietlovingman
Summary: This is a response to reptilia28's Challenge. Harry has just died at the hands of Voldemort and finds himself in a familiar waiting room. Juno his caseworker isn't amused.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

A flash of green light, the sound of wind rushing past, then darkness.

Light returns, a softer green coaxing open the eyelids. Harry Potter finds himself walking through a full height turnstile, into a …waiting room?

Calypso style elevator music seems to be droning quietly in the background as several people that look suspiciously like Inferi sit reading magazines or in some cases copies of a cloth bound book. The room is run down and dirty, the most unpleasant waiting room Harry had ever been in. Not that he had been in many. The 50's furniture is fraying and in some cases being propped up by stacks of old phone books. There are old ashtrays with dirty sand, National Geographic magazines with their covers missing. The linoleum is patched in a hundred places.

Directly across from the entrance is a receptionist's window. She's in a tight fitted, bullet-breasted top that is either part of a rather unusual evening gown or a one piece swimsuit, however as her legs are not visible it is difficult to tell. Her flaming red hair, red lipstick and rather green complexion make for an interesting contrast. She's wearing a ribbon across her breast reading 'MISS ARGENTINA'.

As Harry approaches the counter separating the waiting room from the offices, he clears his throat and hesitantly says, "Excuse me, Miss?"

"Take a number and sign in, wait until you're called" the receptionist rattles off before he can continue.

The "take a number" registers in the millions. As he reaches for the "take a number" his body on auto as he prepares to queue up for whatever this is she glances up and her eyes widen.

"YOU!" She shouts. "What are you doing back here? You were supposed to be… Argh! Take a seat. Juno will be with you shortly." She sighed.

"Juno?" Harry asked timidly, shocked at her outburst and confused that she seemed to have spoken with him before, though for the life of him he couldn't remember when.

"Juno, your caseworker" She replied, rolling her eyes.

Sitting and looking around surreptitiously Harry noticed the door he came in has a lit sign saying No Exit. The books many of the Inferi seem to be reading are all the same. One is placed on the side table next to his chair. Glancing at the cover he reads Handbook for the Recently Deceased this is definitely not what he was expecting the 'next great adventure' to be.

After following the strange flattened man suspended on a messenger cable of some kind Harry finally finds himself walking through a cubicle lined hallway leading to a set of stairs. The cubicles are filled with skeletal typists and slumped figures barely moving. Piles of paperwork litter the floors, the strange green light seems to fill the area without a source, but still shadows fall across the faces of the dead, all of those who still have expression seem to be despairing.

Juno's office is at the top of the stairs; her windows look out onto the cubicle warren. Looking through the door's window Harry can see a small older woman in a very formal suit, she appears to be nearly buried in a veritable mountain of paperwork, as he watches, more papers fall from the ceiling landing on her desk as she continues filling out form after form and placing them into a large stack to her left. Her face is heavily lined; her formerly blond hair nearly completely silver, her bright red lipstick stands out starkly against her pallid skin. Large pearl earrings adorn her ears, and a matching double strand pearl necklace graces her neck.

Harry knocks hesitantly at the door, still confused as to what is happening. As Juno looks up and his eyes meet hers he glances down and notices the gaping cut in her throat, just above the lace ruff of her blouse.

"Come in" she calls brusquely. Giving him a look that reminds him disconcertingly of McGonagall, she continues, "Do you have any idea how much paperwork you have generated for us? In addition to the pile you see before you, all of which is yours," Harry paled and gulped at the intensity of her glare. "There is also paperwork left over from the last five times you have been in my office."

"Excuse me, Mam, but I don't remember ever being here before, do you mean that I have died before and don't remember it?" asked Harry

"Of course you don't remember it," she said scathingly "it's bad enough that the Wizarding world has proof of life after death, if they got an inkling that we could send people back that had just died to get it right we would be buried in the mountain of paperwork they would create. Not to mention the chaos that would cause in the living realm. No Mr. Potter, you have a destiny to fulfill, one you have been failing to accomplish for quite some time."

"So, what was supposed to happen then?" he asked irritated at her accusatory tone.

"I have never met someone so prone to dying before their time before, you were supposed to defeat your Dark Lords, marry your soul mate, some Granger girl I think" she said shuffling through the papers on her desk, "and usher in a new era of equality in the Wizarding world, not turning up here for a couple hundred years or so."

"Soul Mate?" Sputtered Harry "Granger!? But Hermione is with Ron! They kissed just before I went into the woods! She's like a sister to me!" he cried. If anything her demeanor became even frostier.

"Mr. Potter, Do you have a sister?" She asked with an icy tone and cold glare.

"Well, No But…" Harry trails off weekly.

"Did your Cousin, Aunt, or Uncle ever show that they loved you, did they ever make you feel loved?" She continues ignoring his protest.

"No, but I…"

"So then, Mr. Potter, how are you qualified to say that your feelings toward Miss Granger are those of a sibling and not those of a romantic love when you have never experienced familial love."

Crestfallen, he slumps, "I guess - I don't know. But Ron and Hermione are my best friends; I can't come between them like that, even if I did want…"

"Mr. Potter, Harry, You have died more than twenty seven times in your seventeen years of life. Each time we sent you back to the land of the living just before your death with a subconscious command to zig instead of zag, or do whatever it took to avoid that death. Frequently the suggestion was 'Listen to Hermione' She is your soul mate. You need her to be the man you need to be and she needs you just as badly. Surely you remember second year? The terrible strain you were under while she was petrified. Or the horrible month after Cedric's death when Dumbledore prevented her from contacting you? She makes you stronger, and you do the same for her. Remember in third year when you weren't talking to her or that fiasco in sixth year when you began to grow apart. How she began falling apart both times."

Pale, he nodded, tears gleaming in his emerald eyes, but not falling. She continued "She was so sure after fifth year that you didn't see her as a girl, that she needed to distance herself from you and began looking toward Ron as a poor second best. And you eventually turned your affections towards Ginny Weasley, finally beginning to date her only to break up after Dumbledore's death. Did you ever wonder why after five years of her mooning after the 'boy-who-lived' you suddenly decided to go out? Snape had been making potions at Dumbledore's behest so that you and Ginny would produce a Potter Heir before you sacrificed yourself to destroy the fragment of soul in your scar.

"Potions! Ginny would never-"

"Ginny didn't know. She had been on a mild potion regimen keyed to you for a very long time. After all, you and she were betrothed by Dumbledore and Molly before you were two years old. Molly had been grooming her to be Lady Ginerva Molly Potter for years. Molly was very disappointed when you didn't take Ginny to the Yule ball in your fourth year. She had actually purchased matching robes for the two of you when she did your shopping. Ginny used a color changing charm on her dress to make it less obvious when she wound up with Neville. She would have done well with him if her mother hadn't upped the dosages at Grimmauld place." She added with a grimace.

"Moving on, Harry, you have been returned to life so many times that they have decided to mix things up a bit. They even printed a new handbook." She smirks as she hands him a cloth bound hardcover book with a painting of a dark haired man walking through a revolving glass door. _The Handbook for the Repeatedly Deceased_ By the Handbook for the Recently Deceased press.

Staring dumbly at the worn looking book that was quite obviously from the same publisher as the books being read by the dead people in the waiting room it took a moment for his brain to reengage. "Mix things up?" he asked tentatively. "What is going to be different about sending me back this time?"

"Well, a former associate of mine who has a rather nasty tendency to interfere when he isn't wanted had managed to befriend a living girl with enough magic to see ghosts…He also for a while had a nasty habit of sneaking her across into the world of the dead… After she finished preparatory school she came here bold as brass and asked to intern with me and help write a new edition of the handbook for those that are in the know." Juno's pinched face seemed to soften slightly. "Lydia Deetz-Maitland seems to have a knack for crossing over now without assistance, if she was fully magical she would no doubt be quite powerful, but as her magic is solely focused on the spirit world she would register as a squib. But I digress, she suggested, after listening to me rant for over an hour about your stupidity that we should send you back with all of your memories to an earlier death instead of the most recent one. This seemed like a crazy idea, until I realized that it would eliminate six times as much paperwork as it would generate" she said with a heavy sigh and proceeded to light up a rather long cigarette. As the smoke curled around her face and appeared to seep from the gash on her throat she continued.

"Miss Deetz and her associate BJ have worked with the Destiny Repair group and have come up with a solid plan to be followed in the event of another untimely death… and since you have had five in the last twenty-four hours, the higher ups have decided to go ahead with her plan… after all, she has garnered a reputation for turning around the existences of several of our citizens."

Harry's brain having just caught up to what was being said after being distracted by the smoke curling from her throat, finally restarted. "So back to an earlier time, but with my memories, how far back can I go?" As Harry was about to launch into an array of questions that would have made Hermione proud, a thick bundle of papers dropped from the ceiling in front of him, startling him into momentary silence. Juno gestured towards the papers now lying between them.

"That is a binding magical contract that states that you will be returned to life with your memories intact to an as yet undetermined previous death after consultation with the Destiny Repair department. That you will keep secret all that you have learned here including the fact that you are effectively from the future from everyone but your soul mate after having her sign a similar contract that will be provided. That you will have no less than three class one intercessions with my department to assure us that things are playing out as they should. And finally that any deaths of those in service to Tom Marvolo Riddle during the execution of your Destiny Repair Plan shall be considered conscripts to my department where they shall spend their afterlife as social workers working towards the benefit of those they sent here. Sign this and I will have you brought to Destiny Repair where they can answer all your questions."

His mind almost on autopilot Harry reached for the offered fountain pen and signed his full name. Oddly after signing a black blob of wax appeared at the bottom and he absently pressed his signet ring into it to seal the document as official. It flashed blue once before vanishing. Startled he glanced at his hand again and there was no sign of a ring of any sort. Just as he was about to ask about the seal the door opened and Harry turned.

The girl, young woman rather, in the doorway was far more alive looking than any of the people he had met so far. Wearing a knee length pleated skirt with a fitted jacket in black over a white button down blouse the only spot of color on her was the dark red cravat with a spider web pattern on it. Her pale skin and dark hair and the dark circles around her eyes made for an overall striking appearance. In fact with Harry's equally pale skin dark hair and bruised circles from lack of sleep under his eyes to an outside observer they might appear to be related. "Harry Potter, I would like you to meet my assistant Lydia Deetz-Maitland. She will be escorting you to the destiny repair department and assisting with any questions you may have before your return." With that Juno seemed to fade away like smoke. Lydia sighed and said with a smile, "Don't you hate it when she does that?"

Destiny Repair had been interesting. BJ had apparently found his penchant for pranking suited that department quite well, and with Lydia to keep him in check he was fitting in far better than he had as a caseworker for the recently deceased. Lydia's dark humor and sharp wit made it easy for her to pick apart the web of lies and half truths Harry was surrounded by and yet keep him upbeat about it. She also helped him to understand his new handbook. It read like stereo instructions. During the days (weeks?) they spent refining the plan and drilling it into his head Harry had formed a true friendship with them both. Harry would have to visit the states with Hermione once the timeline catches up again.

Blink: _A hand holding a small form underwater_

Blink: _A fat blond toddler swinging a fire iron_

Blink: _A hard shove then a tumble down the stairs_

Blink: _A furious shriek, a swinging frying pan_

Blink: _A child alone in a cold house wishing for a drink of water_

Blink: _A beaten and broken figure on an old cot_

Blink: _A trolls club swinging towards a boy's head_

Blink: _A long fall from a bucking broom followed by a sudden stop at the end_

Blink: _Silence._ _Three snarling heads surging forward_

Blink: _Obliviate!_ _A mindless body lying empty in St. Mungos slowly being strangled by devil's snare_

Blink: _Staring into the eyes of the basilisk unharmed only to be crushed by its body_

Blink: _Succumbing to the basilisk venom before destroying the diary_

Blink: _You cost me my servant boy! Avada Kedavra!_

 **Blink: "** You come back in here! You put her Right!" bellowed Uncle Vernon raising his hand as if to strike. Quick as a flash Harry had his trunk open and wand in hand. In a cold low voice he hissed, "She deserved it. And I am leaving."

Harry headed swiftly towards Magnolia Crescent stopping to catch his breath he sat briefly playing the plan out in his mind. Opening his trunk to retrieve his invisibility cloak he paused as he felt the watching eyes of his godfather. Head swiveling up to stare into the darkness between number two and its garage he said in a small voice, "Pa'foo?"

Slowly and hesitantly a large black dog stepped from the shadows and into the twilight provided by the porch lights of the houses along the street. Harry's face light up like it was Christmas but he stood rooted to the spot so as to not scare off his potentially still deranged godfather. He had been so manic before that night in the shack. Hopefully harry would be able to cool him down. Slowly Harry knelt and presented his hand as if meeting a new dog for the first time. Padfoot came closer taking in the scent of his beloved godson. Seeing something he dared not hope for in his eyes, recognition and love. With a yip, he bounded the last few feet between them knocking Harry to the ground and began licking his face frantically trying to convey his love, his apology and his joy.

"Ge'orff Pa'foo!" Harry grunted shoving the frantic dog to the side, Smiling he continued "Merlin you reek! I'm guessing since you aren't trying to kill me that Peter was the one?"

Padfoot froze and stared at Harry before morphing into a filthy wizard in rags with dark long matted hair. "How could you know that?" he asked shocked. "You were only a year old when your parents went into hiding!"

"Well, at first I didn't remember anything about the Wizarding world except a few disturbing dreams that my relatives didn't want me to talk about, but in the last two years at Hogwarts a few more things have come back to me, and at the end of my first year Hagrid got a photo album together by owling some of mum and dad's friends. Looking through the pictures, a lot of memories came back, names, snippets; I remember chasing a cat on a broom for instance. I always wondered what happened to you Peter and Mo'ey. But for some reason I never got up the courage to ask the professors about it. Actually I'll blame that on the relatives, they react poorly to questions." Clearing his throat he continued. "Anyway, when I saw your picture on the telly and heard your name, I remembered a snippet about changing secret keepers to Peter and you being a decoy. I assume that whatever happened afterwards is a long story?"

Sirius grinned like a macabre skeleton and fumbled in his rags for something, pulling out a folded piece of newspaper he said "Not really, all they found of Peter was his finger, the traitor sold out your parents I hunted him down and he cut off his own finger, blew up the street, and turned into a rat and fled." I was exhausted hadn't slept in two days, grieving for your parents and furious that he escaped; I started laughing and couldn't stop. Next thing I know I am in Azkaban. I stayed there twelve years till Fudge came by on an annual inspection and gave me his copy of the prophet." Unfolding the picture he hands it to Harry who recognizes it immediately as being the same picture Ron had sent in his birthday letter.

"So, a rat with a missing toe?" Harry asked. "Scabbers. Ron's pet rat is Peter?"

"Yes," Sirius hissed "and I need to kill him, I want to commit the murder I have been in prison for the last twelve years for!" His fists begin clenching and unclenching as he hunches in on himself.

"Sirius," Harry said softly, "wouldn't it be better for him to spend the next twelve years in your old cell while you walk free? I seem to recall something about being my godfather, kind of hard to do that if they lock you back up or execute you." He looked searchingly into Sirius' face hoping he was getting through to him. Sirius' hate filled eyes met his, and softened.

"You look just like James did you know, but you have your mothers eyes." Sirius closed his eyes and took a deep shuddering breath, and released it tension seemed to flow from him and as he opened his eyes he seemed calm and focused in a way harry hadn't seen before. "You're right of course, Lilly's son would know just the right thing to say, and James had a terrible habit of egging me on instead."

"Good, because I kind of accidentally inflated Dudley's Aunt Marge and ran away from home. I probably should have decided where I was going to go first." Said Harry sheepishly, looking at Sirius for his reaction.

"I take it back, you are just like James _and_ Lilly; Merlin help us!" said Sirius with a laugh.

Sometime later safely ensconced in a dilapidated dark and dirty row house, the dog and his boy took time to talk of their troubled lives to this point. The crusty curmudgeon Kreature had greeted them exactly as Harry had expected.

"Bad master has returned to the house of black? Mistress will be pleased to see the disappointment has finally decided to do his duty." The ancient elf looked; if possible, slightly better than Harry remembered, of course in the original timeline he hadn't met Kreature until the summer before his fifth year, two years from now. And as far as he knew Sirius hadn't returned to Grimmauld place until after his fourth year as well. Something about a Black Island somewhere.

Upon 'learning' Sirius had an elf at the property they were to be staying at for the foreseeable future Harry warned Sirius of the Malfoy elf Dobby's betrayal of his family and his strange devotion to Harry, and asked how he could ensure that this elf didn't betray them to other members of the Black family or the Authorities. Between them they worked out a set of orders that should suffice and would hopefully prevent any betrayal by the ancient elf. "Kreature! As both of my parents are dead, and I am the last surviving Black of the main family line, I am now head of the family. As head of the Black family, I order you to keep secret anything you may learn of myself or my godson and to obey him as you would me as unless and until I father a child he is my heir in all things."

After retrieving a case of family heirloom wands, Sirius carefully removed the tracking and monitoring charms on Harry and his things, his eyebrows rising at the sheer number of them. Once the trace was lifted Harry began casting a series of privacy wards that had Sirius' eyebrows rising. "Where did you learn all of those?" Sirius asked. "And more importantly why did you feel the need to?"

"Ah, well, all last year starting at Halloween half the school turned on me and accused me of being the heir of Slytherin and attacking the muggleborn students." Harry said sheepishly rubbing the back of his head with his left hand. "Filches cat had been petrified and my friends and I were the ones to discover the scene. Over the course of the year several students were petrified and there was a message in blood on the wall saying that the chamber of secrets had been opened. Hermione researched a few privacy charms and wards we could put up to keep the more antagonistic away and to keep them from pestering us when we tried to work out how Voldemort was doing it this time."

"What do you mean Voldemort? He died twelve years ago" said Sirius paling slightly.

"Not as such, he just lost his body." Harry began, "First year he was riding around on the back of the Defense professors head like some kind of growth hidden by his massive turban. He was lured to the school by rumors that Dumbledore spread that he was guarding Nicholas Flammel's Philosophers' Stone. When Quirrel, the defense professor, died he flew off as some kind of wraith. It seemed a lot less than a ghost like only a fragment of him remained, but it was strong. It flew right through me before leaving and it knocked me out. We, Hermione and I, figured he must be possessing or controlling someone again to do it second year but no one was wearing a turban." Harry said with a smirk. "Turned out he had put a bit of himself in his old Diary and it could possess anyone that wrote in it too much to release the Basilisk. Of course the bit in the Diary only had his sixteen year old self and memories. At the end, it was draining the girl's soul to make him stronger; he was coming back to life as she died. So the wraith is probably still out there even though I destroyed the book. He said something in first year about having gone further down the path of immortality than any before him… So whatever is keeping him from staying dead, he probably has more than one backup."

By this time Sirius was pale as a sheet and gaping like a fish at Harry's matter of fact recitation of his last two encounters with a madman most were afraid to say the name of. Parsing the clues in Harry's heavily edited account he quickly came to the same conclusion his late brother did. "Horcrux" he said hoarsely. "He made a thrice damned Horcrux, Maybe more than one. Oh Merlin Harry, how did you destroy the Diary?" He asked with a frantic gleam in his eyes.

"I stabbed it a few times with the Basilisk fang I pulled out of my arm" Harry said rolling up his sleeve to show the large round scar. "I would have died from the poison if Fawkes the Phoenix hadn't cried in the wound right away." Smiling at the thought of the bird, he continued as Sirius trembling fingers gently probed the scarred circle on his upper arm. "He, the spectral boy, was almost solid by the time I did but when I stabbed it, it was as if I were stabbing him. Then it looked like he was burning up from the inside, with light shining from the places I had stabbed. The book screamed something awful and he disappeared. Ginny woke up then and we managed to make it back up to the school."

"Harry, what were you doing that you got stabbed in the arm by the fang of what appears to be the largest basilisks in the history of the Wizarding world?" Sirius asked with a deceptively light and calm tone as his completion seemed to cycle between red, white and green.

"Oh, I had just killed the basilisk by stabbing it in the roof of the mouth with the sword of Gryffindor in the chamber of Secrets, I got it in the arm because the angle was bad" Harry said holding up his arm as though holding a sword to demonstrate, "it was striking at me blind since Fawkes had pecked out its eyes and I was waiting for a good opening since it's hide was too tough to really penetrate. I got it in the brain but good, sadly my arm is not quite as long as Godrics and as the sword entered its brain, one of its fangs entered my arm. It snapped off as it fell, I'm just glad I fell the other direction, heck the thing was big enough it could have just crushed me." Harry sighed, "After Fawkes cried in the wound and it began to heal, he brought me the book and stabbing it with the fang just seemed the thing to do."

Sirius just sat gaping at Harry his mind rebooting from shock, Harry could almost see the gears grinding as he began to process what Harry had just told him.

"Of course stabbing it gave me a nasty headache centered around my scar, and I saw some weird flashes, images really. Say do you know a spell that would let you see a picture I have in my head?"

"There's _Legilimens_ that lets you connect with someone's mind unless they shield their thoughts. Or you could use a pensieve. But if it's an image planted in your mind rather than a memory, I doubt it would show up in the pensieve it would just be the memory of where you were when it happened. That's why you can't share dreams with one. There is an old illusion spell that lets you project any image you want but you have to focus on the image and it isn't very convincing. It fell out of favor years ago, but your father and I used it for a few pranks over the years. Wand movement is a tight spiral, Incantation is _Animos Occulus._ You can use it to project an image or even a memory, though the longer the scene the harder it is to maintain focus. Mooney figured out a way to use it with the memory copying spell used with pensieves to make it easier to get a longer loop." Putting words to practice Sirius conjured an image from his past that was burned into his psyche. _A younger but still recognizable Peter Pettigrew standing in the middle of a sidewalk wand in hand "_ This is Peter the last time I saw him." He said as the image _made a gesture behind itself and a flash of light occurred_.

Wanting to snap Sirius out of his mood and show him the Necklace at least so they could take care of it soonest, Harry drew his wand and cast the spell, just as the twins had taught him in his fifth year. " _Animos Occulus_ " he whispered as his wand was swished in a tight spiral. And there before them floated the image of the Diadem of Ravenclaw, on the bust in the room of requirement, the Cup of Hufflepuff in sitting in the Vault next to items emblazoned with the LeStrange family crest, the door of the gaunt shack and a close-up of the ring, the image of Tom Riddle's headstone. And finally the Locket of Slytherin in its case in the drawing room upstairs. "That's what went through my head when I killed the Diary" Harry said looking at Sirius.


	2. Ripples

Later that night once Sirius Black had had a chance to get over some of his shock from the revelations his godson had dropped in his lap he began to plan like a Marauder. It was hard to believe that one kid had gone through so much. But really it was just Potter luck. James had a knack for getting into sticky situations as well and apparently Charlus had the same problem in his younger years. One of the reasons that Dorea was attracted to him in the first place according to her stories the first summer he had stayed with the Potters.

God, he hadn't been back to this house since his 16th birthday. It has become almost a decrepit ruin. Something needs to be done about this. Harry deserves better than this. _Even if I don't_.

Juno was happy

Her desk was finally free of paperwork, and with a bit of foreknowledge, she was certain she could keep on top of things. The anticipated increase in staffing was just a bonus. At this rate, she wouldn't even need to pry the secrets of the paperwork Jutsu from Minato.

Lydia was bemused.

Finding herself back in finishing school with several years of memories from the future would come in quite handy. She had no idea that this had been slipped into the contract, but since she was a member of the Destiny Repair team, she supposed it was fitting, alas, unlike Cordelia she was never one to memorize lottery numbers in case of accidental time travel. Perhaps she could persuade her former Real Estate Developer father to invest in a few up and coming stocks…

Beetlejuice was haunting a mirror.

And completely oblivious to Lydia's future memories or the changes to their relationship that they could bring. After all, the last thing the _Ghost with the Most_ needs is a leg up on future events, he causes enough trouble as it is.

Harry was reading.

The _Handbook for the Repeatedly Deceased_ turned out to be a rather amusing read once Harry got into it. Lydia and BJ had obviously had a hand in its creation and most of its advice and information seemed particularly relevant to his situation. Though he was not quite sure what the book meant when it said "Geographical and temporal parameters: Functional parameters vary from manifestation to manifestation." After all, he was fully alive again though technically out of his own time, he was unsure what functional parameter could be affected by his temporally displaced memories… Perhaps he would have to ask one of them about that when next they meet.

Tom was plotting.

In Albania a spirit possessing a small serpent felt a chill and slight weakening of its hold on the host mind. Though Tom was no more a seer than most, he like many powerful mages before him had something akin to a danger sense, one that was telling him he should be moving on… Perhaps it was time to return to England after all. A new body wouldn't build itself and as limited as his abilities are at the moment, he can only possess the willing and small animals. Perhaps seeking out a loyal follower would be worth the risk.

Dumbledore was panicking.

The Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was not having a good evening. He had just returned from one of the summer sessions of the ICW to find that his spinning, smoking, whistling, and plopping silver objects in his office had all ceased moving, making sounds and smoking. All but one, and all it did was tell him that Harry Potter was still alive. The wards around Privet drive were gone, and could not be rebuilt. But what was even more worrying was that all of the tracking and monitoring charms set up on young Harry were also disabled. Only a witch or wizard with curse breaking or Auror training could have removed all the spells he had layered on the boy for his own safety. The books with the needed spells were all on the ministry restricted list and were not even available in Hogwarts library. Going to the cabinet where he kept his Pensieve he opened a well-hidden drawer and pulled out a blood red stone. He was going to need a pick me up before all of the casting he was going to have to do to find the boy and get him back where he belongs.

Hermione was Dreaming.

In a rented chateau on the beach of the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, a breeze blew through the opened window carrying the scent of the sea and a cool moisture laden air into the warm room. Hermione was having a strange dream; even for her considering how strange her dreams had been of late. Giant snakes, cat people, trolls, and Knights in oversized hand-me-downs had all featured in her dreams of late, but tonight she dreamed of Ring Wraiths by the score, hippogriffs, strange hybrid creatures, vicious dragons, Ball gowns and a tall dancer, drowning in the cold dark waters of some deep lake, and a cruel man with an electric blue eye.

Starting awake, Hermione struggled to keep the vivid images clear in her mind as she reached for her Dream Journal. Having read ahead for her upcoming classes this year, she had decided to start Journaling her dreams early to get a head start on the rest of the class. After getting the images, and the feelings associated with them down, and reading back over what she had written, a sense of unease began to settle in the pit of her stomach. For a little light reading, she had also gotten a modern book on dream interpretation and understanding types of dreams, and this did not seem like a Symbolic dream, it was far more like a dream of things remembered, yet, several of the things she had dreamed, she was sure she had never encountered before, but the images were so vivid in her head.

The feelings associated with the images were so disturbing that she felt she simply had to talk to someone, and her parents were right out. She was lucky they hadn't pulled her from Hogwarts after the Petrification incident last term, especially now that they had had the displeasure of witnessing Pureblood Prejudice first hand during Mr. Weasley's confrontation with Mr. Malfoy. Normally she would go to McGonagall with something like this, but she had made her opinion of Divination clear when Hermione had turned in her requested class list. Perhaps she should …. Hedwig flew into the room through the open window.

Silent as only an owl can be, the snowy white bird settled onto the foot of the bed and gazed at her with those amber eyes before lifting an empty leg towards her and placing it down. She then flitted to the top of the wardrobe and appeared to settle in tucking her head under her wing as though saying, _Take all the time you need_.

 _Harry_ , he had been in her dreams more of late, especially since she learned he almost died killing the Basilisk. They had exchanged phone numbers, but she was only home for a couple days before her parents vacation began. They had been in France the last two weeks, and while it was in part a working vacation (Dental conferences are so boring) a lot of time had also been devoted to fun on the beach and improving her tan. Well, as much as an Englishwoman can that is, spending most of the year in northern Scotland had not done much for her complexion. They had stopped in Paris and visited the Rue de la Magie and then spent time in Dijon before heading to the beach in Saint-Tropez, but there had not been anywhere to send a post owl from since Paris. After taking a moment to clear her thoughts, Hermione gets a roll of parchment from her book bag and a fountain pen and begins a letter to her best friend.


End file.
